I have seen endless complaints about the limited snippets of the past. Maybe controversial, but I think that is coming from a place of rigid expectation and not engaging with the season’s premise.
I feel like folks have failed to internalize the “promise” made in the opening when Lestat says the Failures are his account of how he woke the queen and almost destroyed the world. This is in direct contrast to Louis’s “promise” of his “life story for your journalistic pleasure”. Unlike the book, Lestat is not telling you his life story. With that setup, it makes sense that the past only comes up in fits and starts when someone asks (Daniel) or when it interrupts Lestat’s linear thought (which is often).
I can understand why book readers are disappointed since this is not TVL book’s in universe premise (it’s QOTD instead), but also the show was explicit on this intention. Do you think it was too subtle, and they could have done more to guide the audience better? What did you think of this shift?
Personally I think they were very frank, and also clear. But then I also, as a book reader, love the season.
Of course there's expectations which were disappointed by the implementation.
But in all honesty, I don't think this show could have fulfilled people's expectations, not after decades of waiting for this.
And so they decided to do their own thing, going in all guns blazing.
And I fucking love it.
Would I have loved the wolf fight in the snow? You betcha. Would I have loved more of Nickistat in Auvergene? Absolutely. Would I have loved more of the Children of Darkness? Yes.
But... we got so much more in different ways. We got music. MUSIC we can stream, a REAL double album, sung by the actor who IS Lestat. We got fully fleshed out characters, with hopes and dreams and faults, and arcs, even the band, love them to bits?!
And there is more coming!!
You know, back then I read the books "True Blood" is based on, loosely. And you know, the show is truly unrecognizable after a very short time, because it's more an "inspired by" thing then, not the book stories at all. And that's fine.
But this, THIS show manages to keep the arcs and emotional way points intact DESPITE all the changes. Despite layers upon layers upon layers.
Isn't that just amazing?
So yeah. I obviously love how they did it. I love the voice overs. I loved the opening scene, and what it means.
I love that they are really building that puzzle they opened the show with :)
Hello old friend from YOI days : D
I'm just coming back to this place after years away, and we're not in the same fandoms these days, but it's so cool to see your art's progression since those days <3
HI omg it's so surreal seeing people who followed me back during yoi days having stuck around for so long :"> even if we r into different things now, thank you for your kind words and continued support!!
tbh one of the reasons i love revisiting old comfort content (free!, yoi, tmm) so much is tht indescribable feeling i get from coming back after an extended break with a fresh set of eyes and an up-to-date skillset and seeing the kind of art i can make . not only is it a nice measure of progress for the sake of my flimsy artist ego, but it always feels like im picking this thing that was so influential to me back up and honouring it by re-approaching it with every tool in my arsenal . like, 'u meant so much to me and i love u just as much as i did back then, let me show that love again in the only way i know how'
anyway sry omg yoi makes me sappy :'> truly tho thank u again!!!!!
I want to give a HUGE thank you to the wonderful and talented @littorella for coloring this piece, creating the background, and helping me bring this drawing to life! Yuri Plisetsky from Yuri!!! on Ice. Please do not remove the credit or re-post.
[Based on the original idea and beautiful prompt by @littorella]
There are whispers that course through the city of Le Marais. A city made to hold lovers and dreamers safely in its wake, a city that once was covered with lush mounds of meadowy terrain and equally lush estates that harbored the finest aristocrats, a city that once met great discourse for a scandal that set those same estates aflame. Those whispers still course through the city, with it a gentle rumor turned tale that is eternalized in a painting that lives in the heart of the Carnavalet Museum. Within the parameters of the frame is the imagery of two lovers bound together seemingly by chance or even by a fate that would never dare to keep them apart
In the painting a man with raven black hair is seen melting into the gentle caress made by the hands of the carefully carved and luminous man with argent hued hair before him. Their eyes remain shut, mouths slightly agape almost as if the very essence of their love is pouring right into each other, and suddenly it’s a sin that there isn’t another portrait of what happens next should they draw closer.
The first thing one would notice about this piece is that these lovers are holding on to each other, not with complete desperation but a longing of returning to the safest place they have ever known. That feeling of certainty, longing, completeness, in an array of fiery red carefully splotched in the background behind them and no remnants of soot in sight, made scholars deem it a visual of never ending passion. Others have marked the painting as a piece that simply grips at the viewers heart because no matter how one tried to look away it felt nearly impossible.
It is said to instill tears to any and all who view it to this day.
This beloved painting sits surrounded by a plethora of mini paintings each filled to the brim with the imagery of sunflowers: some as yellow as the sun, some as a deeply mulled red one similar to hue one could drink as wine, all bunched together until it simulated a busheled field within a garden. The aforementioned whispers of the city sometimes carried the story of this very sunflower garden into existence. The origin of it all clinging on to the facade of potentially existing somewhere in the countryside, however despite a wildly crazed effort to find it, the location could never be found.
Rumor has it that should the mythical garden ever be located, it would unravel the beautiful tale that is tethered to the subjects in the painting. A bittersweet one of how Lord Yuuri Katsuki had fallen for the irrevocably beautiful drifter turned soldier, turned imposter, Viktor Nikiforov.
Yessss, more meta please. How about the repeating fates parents pass on to their children. Lan Xichen ends up like his father, overly generous with belief in good and unable to forgive himself. Jiang Chen ends up much like his mother, starved of love. Jin Guangyao dies in the same manner of "poetic justice" he did to his father.
Me opening this ask:
OUCH.
It’s true, though. *cries*
Thank you for an MDZS ask! Hooray for getting to talk about this amazing story more. And yep. It’s extremely painful. But as I said here, the connections these three have–Lan XiChen with his brother, Jiang Cheng with his own brother and nephew, and even Jin GuangYao with Lan XiChen–give me hope for them to move forward in the ways their parents did not.
In the cases of Lan XiChen and Lan WangJi’s father and Madame Yu, Jiang’s mom, they were restricted by the rules of society. Lan QiRen, Lan XiChen and Lan WangJi’s uncle, is extremely legalistic to the point where I’d say he appears to be entirely missing the spirit of the laws in favor of the letters of the laws. Not that he’s a bad person per se, and he’s notably the only one from the older generation who survives the story, but he doesn’t exactly seem likely to have reached out to his brother. Lan WangJi, on the other hand, breaks the rules repeatedly for people he loves. He breaks them to protect Wei WuXian, and he breaks them to save A-Yuan, and he breaks them to sleep with and then marry Wei WuXian. Because Lan WangJi understands the spirit of the laws as opposed to just the letter–the laws are there to protect people, not to hurt them and isolate them. Thus I think the story offers the possibility that Lan WangJi will eventually help Lan XiChen forgive himself.
As for Madame Yu and Jiang Cheng, both of them do wind up treating those they love most with the most scorn and causing issues for them. In one of the side chapters, however, which takes place post-novel, Wei WuXian actually encourages Jin Ling to listen to his uncle, because he knows Jiang Cheng loves Jin Ling. Madame Yu, however, never had the chance to show Jiang Cheng nor Wei WuXian that she cared, thanks to the Wen Sect’s oppression. Ironically they are the reason Wei WuXian knows she did care for him, and they are the reason she never got to grow, because they killed her. But there are no oppressive structures (currently) in society when the novel ends, so there’s some improvement, and the hope is that Jiang Cheng will be able to express himself at some point, and just maybe tell Wei WuXian the truth.
Because in reality Jiang Cheng and Wei WuXian are extremely similar: they both want to prove themselves, and they both strive to earn love from those around them. They just channel it differently: Wei WuXian covers it up with laughs and smiles and jokes, and Jiang Cheng acts like he hates everyone so it doesn’t matter that they all hate him. Wei WuXian repeatedly notes his promise to Madame Yu to protect Jiang Cheng at the cost of his own life if necessary, and repeatedly expresses that he feels indebted to both Madame Yu and Jiang FengMian for dragging him off the streets. His resulting self-sacrificial martyr complex behavior is hardly surprising. Meanwhile, Jiang FengMian’s favoring of Wei WuXian at the expense of Jiang Cheng and projecting of his dislike of his wife onto his son results in Jiang Cheng trying desperately to beat Wei WuXian at something, anything, to earn his father’s love. Even after his parents have long been dead and buried, that hasn’t changed.
But Wei WuXian doesn’t need to prove himself to Lan WangJi, and that’s how he moves beyond this complex. He’s actually notably at his worst around Lan WangJi and expresses that he would never have dared to do half the things he did if he knew Lan WangJi felt the way he did–and yet, even thinking Wei WuXian was cruelly mocking him for his love for him, Lan WangJi does not abandon him. And the thing is, Wei WuXian and Jin Ling aren’t terribly likely to give up on Jiang Cheng either–not necessarily because of a promise, but because Wei WuXian does love his brother, and Jiang Cheng does love him. So I think there is hope for Jiang Cheng to recover too.
Jin GuangYao is a bit of a different case, since he’s dead so obviously there’s no hope for him to heal. But his father, Jin GuangShan, loved no one by ‘loving’ everyone, and coveted power and sex pretty much constantly. When Jin GuangYao kills him, it’s in a terrible way. And Jin GuangYao dies at the hands of the brother he killed–but his last action is to push Lan XiChen away, to save the one person he did truly love. I mean, he says “I have done all these things and more, but I never once thought of hurting you!” So in that way, he at least showed humanity by saving his one connection with his humanity.
Connection is kind of at the heard of MDZS. It’s what enables Lan WangJi and Wei WuXian to escape their personal demons, it leads them out of society’s traps, it prevents total genocide by enabling Lan SiZhui to survive, it saves Jin Ling from a life of bitterness like his uncle and grandmother before him by enabling him to make friends after all, and to forgive Wei WuXian and Wen Ning. When you love people, however you love them–romantically, platonically, fraternally, familial–it enables you to break free of society’s rules and curses of repeating the future (because until Jin GuangYao was stopped, he was well on his way to creating Wen Sect 2.0).
And the juniors aren’t repeating this cycle at all. They’re sneaking out to go on night hunts with Wen Ning, they’re very obviously cheering for Lan WangJi and Wei WuXian’s relationship, etc.
So anyways, while the novel ends with those definitive parallels, I think it’s also hopeful in its ending that society is changing slowly, and that just because things look to be repeating doesn’t mean they’re doomed to. As I said in my post on the last chapter’s raw translation:
we don’t need to see Lan XiChen recover from Jin Guang-Yao’s betrayal and emerge from his seclusion (which is a parallel to how his father secluded himself), nor do we need to see Jiang Cheng and Wei WuXian actually reconcile to believe that they will get there. Because the novel shows us they will get there, and that Lan XiChen will not repeat his father’s life, through showing us not just how Lan WangJi and Wei WuXian broke away from what society told them, but through showing us that Lan SiZhui, Jin Ling, Lan JingYi, and the other juniors are already making choices to go against society and do what’s right. We have faith that society is going to shift slowly, and that the connections characters like Lan XiChen and Jiang Cheng and Wei WuXian have will bring them through their pain; their journeys just aren’t over yet.
Hi beautifuls, you can now get both these two 4x6 postcard prints for just 1 ko-fi. That’s $3 for both prints (global shipping included)! The low price is bc I’m just doing this for fun, so they are at cost.
omg did i make it? is it 30min? because I like would love, no, NEED some happy birthday katsudon ficlets
you made it! … i’m just the one who’s late RIP
Viktor is so quiet in the hospital bed, Yuuri thinks, as he looks at him through the glass. “How is he?” he asks the nurse, whose smile is sad but bracing.
“Better now. It was lucky for him he only took a small bite of the poisoned food. The person who did that overdosed it on purpose.”
“I suspect most people wouldn’t have noticed, given the entire restaurant’s schtick of weird foods,” Yuuri mutters, looking back at the nurse. “Can I go in?”
They nod. Yuuri quietly opens the door and steps inside.
“Babicheva got me,” says Viktor, cracking open an eye from where he lies on the bed. “I’ll be ready to go soon.”
“You’re still recovering,” Yuuri chides, taking a seat at the hospital bed next to him. “Now, how could it be that the former manager of the Stammi Vicino could get three attempts on his life in such short succession? I mean, most bosses will just pay your severance package and leave it at that.”
“They must’ve hated my review,” says Viktor, grinning. “I took off that star of theirs as soon as I could. The corruption wasn’t worth it.”
“Your review,” echoes Yuuri, sitting a little straighter at that. “You’re a food critic?”
“Michelin guide,” confirms Viktor, his grin widening. “But don’t tell anyone else, or else the guide will have to skip LA for another decade.”
Yuuri raises an eyebrow. “You know, I was convinced you were Russian Intelligence for a while,” he says, still suspended between relief and disbelief. All of that international jet-setting and James Bond-esque action, and it turns out this devastatingly handsome idiot is just a secretive food critic. He sure knows how to pick them.
“Oh god, I couldn’t be,” Viktor declares, his laugh almost a wheeze. “What about you, though? How do we keep on showing up at the same restaurants?”
Yuuri bites his lip. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” he jokes, but when Viktor raises an eyebrow he laughs and shakes his head. “I still really can’t say,” he says, “but I’m definitely not a food critic.”
Viktor’s eyes narrow. “You mentioned you were from London,” he says, before his eyes go wide. “Ooh, slick. I get it.”
“Do you?” wonders Yuuri, shifting closer, drawn towards Viktor’s pink lips and the sparkle in his eyes. “What do you think I do for a living?”
Viktor grins, taking Yuuri’s hand and pressing it to his lips. “Consider me shaken, not stirred,” he replies. “Yukimoto’s not even your real name, is it?”
“If you could ever take me to a dinner that isn’t swarming with would-be assassins, I’ll tell you my real name,” replies Yuuri.
“Promise?” Viktor asks. Yuuri extends a pinky, nodding. Viktor hooks in his own.
“That’s a date,” declares Yuuri. “Where would you take me, o great Michelin food critic?”
Viktor purses his lips. “How about Din Tai Fung?”
Yuuri grins. “Unexpected,” he hedges, “but I’d love to.”
hate to break the news, but this movie will be about...Cao Bin.
spoiler: he wins the olympics without being shown clearly on screen even once, the best glimpse we get is through vitya’s eyes which are blurred with tears of disappointment
